seasonal affective disorder

VIDEO: State of the Rock – Oct 16 2025

A quick update as we head into the final cottage weekend of the season. Grab A Stack of Rock will roll on with some great content this winter and into 2026, but changes are afoot.

#1217: When the Fall Starts to Fall

RECORD STORE TALES #1217: When the Fall Starts to Fall

 

The Equinox has passed us (Sept. 22).   All that remains is the clock change (Nov. 2).  The Seasonal Affective Disorder remains at bay for the moment.  Green still rules the outdoors, for now holding the bleak grey back.  Soon, however, this shall change.  What challenges will the fall bring?

I think, for the time being at least, I am done doing the live Contrarians on Wednesday nights.  It was a key part of my mental health strategy last winter, but like many things it became monotonous.  If the Contrarians do return on Wednesday nights this fall and winter, I am not sure if I will participate.  It was a healthy form of expression, but I confess that I prefer doing my own thing.  It enabled me to meet and work with new friends, which was valuable.  It is possible that I may replace it with something of my own in the same time slot, if it is not being used by the Contrarians.  We shall see.

My biggest challenge at the moment is what I call the “Monday Crash”.  I seem to struggle with waking up on a Monday morning these days.  Sometimes I just can’t see to get out of bed, and I end up working from home.  The option to work from home does help, but working from the office is infinitely more efficient.  My Mondays seem to be an uneasy truce between depression and dedication.  This happened through the summer too, but I worry about how fall will effect the battle.  Will it sway one side or another?

Back in 2022, my strategy for coping with fall and winter involved sending pictures and videos of Canadian weather to my new friend in California, MarriedandHeels.  While it did help for a while, it was not a good long-term strategy.  The novelty of taking winter pictures for a far-away friend, for her reactions, was a good idea but it could not last the whole season.  I needed strategy that focused on me, and not someone else.  I am pleased to say that MarriedandHeels and I are friends again, on normal social media, and have been for longer than we were originally the first time.  Unfortunately, she is dealing with her own things today and I can’t base any strategies on her in 2025.  I find myself trying to support her, which is not a bad thing.

For the winter of 2025, I am going to try and do some things that we never got around to last year.  These ideas included a winter trip to the cottage.  That is still in the cards, if the weather happens to line up with a free weekend.  Record shopping in the winter is also a must.

Things seem to be going OK.  I just got a new PC (though the CD drive is not quite working yet), and 50 Years of Iron Maiden is keeping me busy.  It has been an enriching experience.  Before we’re done, we’ll have three more guests who have never been on Grab A Stack of Rock before.  These things are healthy and keep me from becoming a recluse.

Here we go, lads.  Let’s have a triumphant winter like last year.  Repeat performance.  Let’s go!

#1177: Snowpocalypse Now!

RECORD STORE TALES #1177: Snowpocalypse Now!

I haven’t been writing much lately, which is a choice I made in order to avoid the burnouts of the past, and to focus on giving 100% to 50 Years of Iron Maiden.  Doing this series has been a healthy and rewarding experience.

In the last week, my town has been hit with roughly 70 centimetres of snow.  I had not seen snow like this since the 1990s.  It’s quite remarkable!  On Saturday morning, Jen and I went out on a junk food run to stock up for the holiday weekend.  (The junk food lasted about 36 hours.)  We noticed that a lot of the snowbanks were taller than the humans on the sidewalks.  That was before we got hit with another 40 cm.

But here I am, sitting indoors and just marvelling at the winter wonderland.  That is where we break this story down into a mental health detour.

I had to find a new counsellor again, which sucks.  I really like my counsellor now, but she has another maternity leave coming, and it is hard finding a good match.  I did however find a new counsellor earlier this month that I think is going to work out.  I am optimistic.

Perhaps because of that optimism, I had a revelation the other day.  It goes back five years, to when Covid began.

We were all forced to adapt.  We were all stuck indoors.  Some of us had to work from home.  Everyone bought webcams.  Anyone that could work from home during that time, probably did at least once.  Now, working from home policies are pretty standard.

And thus it occurred to me:  storms like this don’t have as big an impact on me anymore, because I can just stay home and work.  That is a game changer as far as my winter disorder goes.  I don’t have to go fight the roads just to get to work alive.  I can stay home, and eat pretty much anything I want to.  That’s thanks to Covid.  So there you go.  Perspective.  Five years ago I said I’d have loads of perspective.  There’s one angle.

Of course, for me, working from home recently meant a drop in creativity.  One of the cardinal rules of working from home is:  “Thou shalt not use your creative space as your work space.”  It’s just not good for mental health to mix the two, but I have no choice.  So, as a result, when I’m done sitting in this chair for eight or nine hours of work, I don’t choose to sit in it again for an hour or two more.  It’s not healthy.

I will say one thing, which is that I bought a disappointing Rod Stewart CD this past weekend that I should have spent more time reading the sticker.  You’re In My Heart:  Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  Cool, Rod with a symphony.  All my favourite songs like “Reason to Believe” and “You’re In My Heart”.  New versions, I assumed.  Unfortunately, I discovered it’s just another Drastic Symphony.  Except for two new recordings, it’s just old Rod classics with strings dubbed in, just like Def Leppard.  Disappointing!

So, writing hasn’t been a priority when I have this stuff going on, but not everybody watches YouTube so it’s nice to touch base like this once in a while.  Hope you’re doing well.

#1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

RECORD STORE TALES #1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

As much as Record Store Tales is about music, and personal music history, it has also become a related sub-story about mental health and seasonal affective disorder.  It was only during the early years of publishing Record Store Tales that I was forced to deal with it.  This has been a musical journey, and a rocky road of personal struggle, triumph, setbacks, and triumph all over again.  A big part of my problem is my seasonal affective disorder, which I have been open about for years.  I get depressed in the winter:  facts!  My genes are Mediterranean, and I was not built for snow or months of dark skies.  And so, it is sad to say that the cottage season of 2024 is officially at its end.  But what a year it was.

The year of drones!  Every year I want to level up my video-making abilities.  I never know what exactly that will be until I stumble upon it.  One year, it was the discovery of super-slow-mo videos.  This year I took the skies!  My cottage videos were dominated by drones this year.  A satisfying artistic triumph, and a super fun hobby that I highly recommend.

I called this chapter “The Last Note of Freedom” because that’s the song that I chose to use in my last cottage drone video of the year.  The same David Coverdale song that was inexplicably used in my high school graduation slideshow.  It always signals endings and beginnings to me, besides being a great song.  A good one one which to end the summer 2024 flying season.  Maybe this winter we’ll see if I can fly in the snow.

Meanwhile, back at home, this was also the summer that we discovered deep dish pizza.  I have always been curious but wary.  This summer, we found not one but two local places that serve up (and deliver) reasonably authentic deep dish.  (The “delivery” part is important because I don’t really enjoy going out to eat.)  And so, along with droning, deep dish pizza will become a winter activity when we have the blues.  I very much enjoy the thick gooey cheese, and the tomato sauce was a lot more enjoyable than I expected.  While it is not for everyone, and definitely a very different kind of pizza, I would say that deep dish is indeed pizza.  (There’s a whole debate about this.)

More food experiments will happen as we hunker down for another cold winter.  I’ve always wanted to try one of those ramen places, and soup is perfect for winter.  We also have to try a few “indoor steaks” when we start to go into beef withdrawl.

Yes, I’m optimistic.

And so as we say goodbye to summer and the cottage, we look forward to what comes this winter.  Lots of music, lots of new things, and always with a focus on creativity.

 

#1159: A Mighty Wind & A Million Vacations

RECORD STORE TALES #1159: A Mighty Wind & A Million Vacations

As fall starts to take hold, I need to be mindful.   Mindful of dark thoughts and feelings.  And so, on Friday night when we departed for the lake, I focused.  The music must be bright, for it will be dark out soon.  We must keep the spirits up, for it is that time of year again.  By this time in 2022, I was already suffering from my seasonal disorder.  In 2024, I’m doing OK so far.

In preparation for Friday night’s episode of Grab A Stack of Rock (the first indoor show at the lake in a year), we played the soundtrack to A Mighty Wind in the car.  It has us singing and smiling along.  We followed that with Max Webster’s A Million Vacations.  The drive up was relatively uneventful.  We were almost killed at the St. Jacobs roundabout by a white minivan who turned left from the right lane, but hey, it’s all good.  I hit the brakes in time enough for the guy behind us not to rear-end my car.  Thanks a lot of for the sudden jump in stress, but we made it alive in one piece.  Along the way we spotted a cute cat in the bushes.  We even arrived by 7:00 pm, which meant I had an hour to prepare for the 8:00 pm show, including some daylight time.  The show went off without a hitch.  Non-stop laughs, love and deep analysis.  Just how I like it.

Saturday was a beautiful day, but we have different priorities in the fall compared to summer.  Instead of going out and buying the best meat and veggies, we have to start using up what’s left in the freezer.  I tried some experiments, but nothing was particularly successful.  We ate some frozen steaks that had been sitting around all year, but they were tough and lined with gristle.  I tried cooking some leftover corn in a pan with some onions and mushrooms, but the overall flavours didn’t mix well.  I was left with something that tasted like shepherd’s pie, which was not what I was aiming for.  The sweetness of the corn didn’t mix with the funkiness of mushrooms.  After a summer of so many food experiment successes, it was alright to have one failure in 2024.

Saturday night, a mighty wind began to blow.  We didn’t have too many storms in 2024, so this was more than welcome.  Strangely, it remained warm outside.  The rain came in spurts.  We never got properly drenched.  We just remained inside and enjoyed it.

We didn’t get as much done this weekend as we hoped.  We always plan for more than we have time to do, but we didn’t let any time go waste.  We made some great meals, had a nice fire outside, took the drone up, and Jen got to watch all her sports games.

On the way home, I began to feel that sadness creep in.  I fought it off with Van Halen and David Lee Roth:  5150, and Skyscraper.  5150 did not do the trick.  Skyscraper did.  With Dave as the cheerleader and nostalgia in the music, Roth kept my spirits upbeat.  It was the magical mixture.

Once home, I ordered an amazing deep dish pizza from a local place called Franklin’s.  It was my first deep dish pizza, with the cheese running so gooey and the sauce so tangy.  It wasn’t super deep, so next time I want to try something even bigger.  Either way, bucket list item checked off the list.

Was this our last trip to the lake in 2024?  We don’t know, but what I do know is that we did it right this time.

 

 

#1154: The Roar

RECORD STORE TALES #1154: The Roar

When summer turns to fall at the lake, there is a constant roar. It is always there. It is a mixture of a churning lake only meters away, dulled by the branches of the evergreens, but amplified by the wind. The wind is steady now, always pushing us towards fall.

When we arrived on Thursday night, the weather hadn’t turned foul yet.  It was still warm, and the wind was tame enough to fly.  I took the drone up for its first lake flight in a month.  We haven’t been here for a long time.  And now, it’s time to wind things down.  No more stocking up on food and games for the season.  Instead we are faced with a full freezer needing consumption, and a shelf of Uno variants that we just never got around to.

Models kits unbuilt.  ZZ Top’s Eliminator, and a gold C-3P0.  Never got to ’em this year.  And now there’s no time for it this year.  Next year, maybe.

We drove up to the sounds of Triumph Stages, a cottage classic.  It took us almost the whole way.  When here, we played ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery for research purposes.  Opinions were mixed.  More on that another time.

My usual routine involves setting up on the porch with my speakers and some music.  It’s getting darker sooner, and this was probably the last weekend of the year for that routine.

Now, there is only the sound of the roar.

#1148: No Drone Movies

RECORD STORE TALES #1148: No Drone Movies

With my mom and sister visiting Japan in August, my dad didn’t want to spend his weekends at the cottage.  By that stroke of luck, Jen and I had the cottage for three weekends in a row.  I can’t remember the last time I was at the cottage for three weekends in a row.  I was probably a teenager.

I spoke to my mom after she got back from Japan, jet-lagged by about 12 hours.  My sister managed to catch a case of Covid, but my mom was luckier.  Even so, she was too worn out to use the cottage on the weekend of August 9.  At the last minute, they decided to stay home that weekend.  Therefore, Jen and I could go if we wanted to.

It’s a shame to let the cottage stay empty on a summer weekend.  We had planned on staying home and working on organizing the music collection, but at the last minute, we got out of town and hit the road.

I went with Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind on the way up, followed by War Within Me by Blaze Bayley.  I had been immersed in an Iron Maiden writing project and decided to keep the vibe going on the road.  It was fascinating to hear how recording and production had changed between the two albums.  Piece of Mind was an organic sounding listen, with natural drums and lots of room sound.  War Within Me was modern, clean and technical.  While I prefer the analog, organic sounds, I realize that it is of the past.  A good double bill for the road.

Upon arrival on Friday night, I got the drone out, which is a good thing, because the theme for the rest of the weekend would be “No Drone Movies”!

Editing to the music of “80 Days” by Marillion, it was incredibly hard to fly at sunset with the sun in my eyes.  I could not see my drone from the ground.  I was flying by camera the whole time.  It was a good flight, with great visuals, but it was to be the only flight of the weekend, for within an hour, the gale-force winds rose!  The winds would last all weekend, and would not let up at all.  The drone was boxed for all Saturday and Sunday.

And this is when things got weird for me.

With the air cool, the wind high, and the skies dark, my seasonal affective disorder kicked in.  Big time.  It felt exactly like fall at the cottage.  Even though it was early August, and the previous week had a beach packed with kids and tourists, this was a cold deserted weekend.  All the feelings came rushing back, from years of “back to school” ads and activities.  The memories came back too:  listening to White Lion on a cold wet day on my Walkman by the river, wondering what the next school year would bring.  All back like a Polaroid picture.

My counselor told me specifically it’s too early to worry about fall, but here I am.  Unable to get it off my mind.

I am glad we went to the lake this weekend.  It’s wasteful to leave it empty on an August weekend.  My mental health is better there, than home.  But I can’t shake this foreboding feeling of fall.

 

#1100: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 1 – The Empire Strikes Back

Welcome to Homework From My Therapist!  I have a new therapist; she’s nice, and fresh ideas are always helpful as I make the transition from Summer to Fall to Winter.  She asked me about happy winter stories; I said I had several.  She suggested I write them down somewhere I could easily find them, any time I needed a pick-me-up in the winter.  Of course, for me, that means the easiest location is right here.  I am putting on my Empire Strikes Back soundtrack as I type, and I am in the zone.  Let’s do this!

Join me won’t you, for this walk through the winter snow of 1981?

RECORD STORE TALES #1100: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 1 – The Empire Strikes Back

Even as a child I never liked winter, always looking forward to the warmth and freedom of the summer sun.  The winter of 1981, however, offered a new opportunity.  The Empire Strikes Back was the latest thing.  We were collecting all the toys, all the figures, everything we could.  With winter here, we now had the opportunity to dress up as the characters for outside role play!

The snow was deep on our tiny frames that winter.  You truly could imagine you were on the ice planet of Hoth, if not for all the trees.  Winter trips to the cottage offered the more bleak landscape of a completely frozen lake as far as the eye could see, but we didn’t dress in our Star Wars outfits when we made those winter visits.  That was a home activity for the winter weekends!

My sister dressed as Luke Skywalker.  I let her use my glow-in-the-dark “laser sword” for that purpose.  I wanted to be Han.

My dad had made us wooden guns and pistols by cutting shapes out of playwood offcuts and painting rough details.  Perfect for a Solo blaster!  I used my dad’s real leather holster, which even at its tightest was always so loose.  Every good Canadian kid has a pair of snow pants; mine were blue or brown.  I grabbed a pair of goggles from a snorkel set.  To top it off came my pride and joy:  a blue winter coat, with a big furry hood…just like Han Solo’s.  I’d strap on my laser pistol on top of that and trudge out into snow for an hour or two.

Other kids from the neighbourhood would drop in and play other roles.  Someone would have to roar like Chewbacca as I pretended to trade blasts with an Imperial probe droid.

When it was time to board the Millenium Falcon, we’d jump into my dad’s car in the garage.  He didn’t like that part too much, as we fiddled with buttons in a vain attempt to get the Falcon into hyperspace.

When it came time to come in and get warm, we always had the original John Williams soundtrack to keep us entertained with our Kenner action figures.  Even so, the importance of the role play can’t be left out of the story.  It allowed the kids to go out, run around, burn off energy, and be social with other kids as we all re-enacted our favourite Star Wars movies.  We couldn’t just go and pop a video tape into our VCRs.  Few of us had a VCR yet.

The Empire Strikes Back was the newest of the Star Wars movies, and was completely new and exciting to all of us, boys and girls alike.  We’d all seen it.  It was a family thing.  Anyone could jump in and play the role of Chewie,  3P0, Princess Leia, or Darth Vader.  But I was Han Solo.  That was a constant, as non-negotiable as a deal with Jabba the Hutt himself.

We did it all over again in 1982, and 1983.  I think I may have commandeered my mom’s ski goggles at that point, refining my costume.

After Return of the Jedi came out in May of ’83, my focused changed to Luke Skywalker.  Not only was he suddenly badass instead of this whiny disrespectful little shit, but he looked really cool in his new black outfit.  Our role play changed to summer, and I donned a black glove while reclaiming the glow-in-the-dark laser sword as my own.  My sister could be Han Solo this time, but that meant she had to pretend to be blind before I saved her!

Star Wars died down pretty quickly after 1983, and as kids we moved on to other interests as well.  It must be remembered, the length of time we lived with Empire as “current” Star Wars movie.  It came out in spring of 1980, so we were playing Empire and getting Empire toys for Christmas for 1980, ’81, and 1982!  For me, that was age 8 to age 10, the most important span of years in a kid’s childhood!  For my sister, it was ages 4 to 7, almost as important!  That chunk of our lives coincided with a cool “sweet spot” of Star Wars.  Not only did we get the best movie of the series, with some of the best toys and figures of the line, but also got three years of yearning anticipation and fear!  Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father?  How would they save Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt?  What was Jabba the Hutt?  We had to use our imaginations and we imagined every scenario we could in our games.

Those were good times in some cold, wet winters.  Let’s not forget them, nor the warmth of a hot chocolate after we kicked the snow off our boots and hung our snow pants up to dry.  That would have been a good winter Saturday in 1981.

 

#1080: S.A.D. Origins

RECORD STORE TALES #1080: S.A.D. Origins

As long as I can remember, I’ve hated winter, and craved the warm rays of summer.  My dominant genes are Mediterranean.  My not-so-distant ancestors made their living on the balmy coasts of Sicily, and Amalfi before that.  I was never cut out for the cold months.

I took hockey lessons as a kid.  I hated putting on those uncomfortable skates and all that cold-weather gear.  “Why do I have to take hockey lessons, mom?”

“Every good Canadian boy should know how to skate,” she answered.

Why?  Why couldn’t I just stay indoors where it was warm and I didn’t have to bundle up in three layers to go outside?  Hockey lessons never appealed, and to this day, I can’t really skate.  I mean, I can go forward…I can turn…but I can’t stop.  So, I can’t really skate.  Do I care?  No.  It’s been 27 years since I was last on skates.  More than half my life ago.

I can’t ski.  I can’t even get on the chairlift properly.  I haven’t been on skis since…1986 maybe?  No interest whatsoever.  We would build snowforts and take toboggans downhill, but I would much rather it be warm outside, riding my bike and playing in the sun.  The winter was always wet and messy.

My earliest memory of seasonal affective disorder was studying a globe with my dad as a kid.  I’ve long been obsessed with maps.  I’d study maps until the cows came home.  This time, we were looking at a globe.  He was explaining how the analemma on the globe worked: that figure-eight line that tracked the movement of the sun over the 12 months of the year.  The line can be traced by finding the position of the Sun as viewed from the same position on Earth at the same time every day.  In the winter, the sun can be found travelling the line in the southern hemisphere on our globe, but my dad explained, once December 21 came and went, the sun would be making its way back north again.  I would look at the globe and find the date on the analemma.  It sure made it feel like summer was coming, to see it translated into mere centimeters on a globe.

It’s quite remarkable that I was feeling those feelings as a kid.  Not even 10 years old yet?  Counting the days until the sun was back in the northern hemisphere.  To the days when I shed my outer skin of parkas and boots, and went back down to a T-shirt and shorts, basking in the comfort of the Canadian summer.  Seasonal affective disorder has been with me at least that long.

Another memory:  winter time, putting on my layers to go outside.  By the time all the layers were on, I didn’t want to go outside anymore.  My parents really struggled with trying to keep me active in the winter.  I wished I could have hibernated through it all.

I wonder if the added component here was school?  I hated school.  I hated the bullies.  The summer represented time away from all of that.  I wonder how much that fed into my seasonal affective disorder?

I guess that’s something I can explore with my mental health team this winter, as I try new strategies to stave off the S.A.D.ness.  We have some tentative plans and vitamin D is on the menu.  Let’s make the most of it.

Wish me luck.